Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) spun another zinger in an interview on Thursday with the liberal “Pod Save America” podcast. During the interview, she claimed that the core of Trump supporters are racists, and that the rest of the supporters willingly go along with the racism out of ignorance for what racism is.
“It’s not about asking are Trump voters racist. We need to talk about racism, not racists. Racist — it’s a very two-dimensional, boring conversation. Is something racist, yes or no,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“It’s not about asking whether Trump voters are racist. We need to talk about racism.”
“We need to talk about racism. Its contours. Its histories, where it manifests. How it’s used because like all winning, political phenomenon, whether they’re good or bad in your opinion, they rely on coalition building,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “Trump relied on a coalition and a core part of that coalition were racists building a coalition with all sorts of other people that could be susceptible to racist views if they were blanketed and layered and made people feel good about it not being a racist thing,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She continued, “We need to talk about racism, its contours, its histories, where it manifests, how it’s used, because like all winning political phenomena, whether good or bad in your opinion, they rely on collation building. So Trump relied on a coalition, and a core part of that coalition were racists building a collation with all sorts of other people that could be susceptible to racist views—if they were blankets and layered and made people feel good about it not being a racist thing.”
She added, “So there are a lot of people that support Trump that genuinely don’t believe that they are racist because we do not talk about or educate people on recognizing racism. And because we do not do that we get caught in this debate of is something racist. Then people use their defensiveness, and they say, ‘Well, it’s not racist because I’m not racist and I believe this thing because it’s economic in nature.’”
